Bananas in Peril

Enjoy your smoothies, splits and cream pies while you can because it might not be long before their key ingredient goes extinct. Banana plants all over the world have been plagued by disease for the past two decades and it looks like our crops are next.

A recent (and expectantly epic) piece in The New Yorker told of the demise of the Cavendish banana, which currently makes up ninety-nine percent of exported bananas. Though Cavendish bananas require a good amount of attention and a large quantity of frost-free weather (about 14 months), they yield a high amount of bananas per stalk. Rich in potassium, magnesium and fiber as well as vitamins B6 and C, Cavendishes are hearty enough to withstand overseas trips and don't ripen too quickly or bruise too easily. Americans consume as many Cavendish bananas as they do apples and oranges combined. And why not? They seem to be the perfect fruit (not to mention the main component in a classic and always funny prank).

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But the Cavendish have their kryptonite. Science calls it Tropical Race Four but when it destroyed about seventy percent of Taiwan's crop and rampaged through Malaysia and Indonesia in the late eighties, local papers deemed it to be the "H.I.V. of banana plantations." Chemicals are not able to kill or prevent it. Eventually, the disease made its way over to Australia where it is currently systematically wiping out crops. Scientists believe that it will inevitably make its way over to Latin America. Tropical Race Four is a fungus that is spread through the soil. It is harmful only to bananas.

So is all hope lost? Should we start learning to love plantain-nut bread? Some researchers are not ready to give up. At Queensland University of Technology, professor James Dale is attempting to genetically modify crops to be resistant to the disease. He is planning on planting four acres this spring in order to test his creations. Fernando Aguilar of the Fundación Hondureña de Investigación Agrícola is making the effort to naturally engineer resistant bananas, which requires lots of time, patience and hands on work. "The hybrid plants are like women," Aguilar told the New Yorker. "To look at a woman from afar is not to know the woman. To know her, you must be with her. And to know the hybrids you must be with the hybrids." So buck up banana lovers, with dedication like that there is hope yet.